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Joe Conley was born in Buffalo, New York. He started acting after returning from military service in Korea, and was running three real-estate agencies in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles by the early 1970s after beginning this second career in 1961. While acting, he continued to work in real estate and, as a result, became wealthy.[5]

By the early 1970s his career as an actor was in limbo. After twenty years of small parts in mainly television shows, he had only been in two bit parts in as many years before he was cast as storekeeper Ike Godsey in The Waltons. Conley was paired with Ronnie Claire Edwards, who portrayed his bossy wife Corabeth Walton Godsey; their characters married in the show during 1975. In 2009, Conley published his autobiography, Ike Godsey of Walton's Mountain.[6]

He was married and divorced to Jacqueline Stakes, with whom he had two children. He married Louise Teecher in 1969 and had two children with her.